A journal charting events in the Middle East and beyond concerning the eventual settlement of the Israel-Palestine situation.

Monday, 17 March 2014

Cameron, the UK and Israel

To
the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain Jews…

To
the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak:
I have become all things to all men - St Paul, 1
Corinthians

Politicians
certainly aren’t saints, but they do have this in common.

On February 7, 2014 David Cameron,
Britain’s prime minister, delivered a rousing speech on the subject of the
forthcoming referendum in which the Scots are to be offered the option of
renouncing their union with the rest of the United Kingdom and becoming an
independent nation. He did not presume
to advise the Scots on how to vote, but addressed himself to the rest of the UK – the English, the Welsh and the Northern
Irish – urging them to use their influence with their Scottish relatives and friends
in favour of preserving the Union.

In proof of the inextricable bonds
that have developed over the centuries between the Scots and the rest of the UK, Cameron pointed to his own surname and origins.Cameron is an undoubted Scottish name.

“Such is the fusion of our bloodlines,” he declared,
“that my surname goes back to the West Highlands
and, by the way, I am as proud of my Scottish heritage as I am of my English
heritage. The name Cameron might mean ‘crooked nose’ but the clan motto is “Let
us unite” – and that’s exactly what we in these islands have done.”

On March 12, 2014,
David Cameron was in Israel.
Addressing the Knesset, he augmented his English-Scottish origins.

"My Jewish ancestry,” he informed the assembled MKs, and through them the rest
of the Jewish people, in both Israel and the diaspora, “is relatively limited,
but I do feel just some sense of connection – from the lexicon of my
great-great-grandfather, Emile Levita, a Jewish man who came from Germany to
Britain 150 years ago, to the story of my forefather Elijah Levita, who wrote
what is thought to have been the first ever Yiddish novel."

Cameron’s Jewish heritage was first revealed in 2009, when one of Britain’s leading rabbinical authorities, Yaakov
Wise, of ManchesterUniversity’s Centre for
Jewish Studies, traced his family tree back to the 16th-century Jewish scholar
Elijah Levita.

Levita, who was responsible for the first dictionary of the Targums, or
Aramaic commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, wrote his novel, “The Bove-Bukh”, in
about 1507. It was published in 1541,
the first non-religious book to be printed in Yiddish. A highly popular chivalricromance, it went through at least 40
editions over the next five centuries. The
Bove-Bukh became known in the late-18th century as the Bove-mayse
or "Bovo's tale" – and this title was in turn corrupted, and passed
into the Yiddish language as bubbe meise
(literally "grandmother's tale").

Britain’s prime minister was bold enough not only to declare his one-sixteeenth
connection to the Jewish people, but to pledge himself to oppose the boycott of Israel, because
the main purpose of his visit was to enhance UK-Israeli
trade. His plane to Israel was full
of the men and women whose businesses are contributing to what has recently
turned into a bilateral trade bonanza. That is the reality of the British-Israeli
relationship – which is why attempts to destroy it via the Boycott, Divestment
and Sanctions (BDS) movement are doomed to irrelevance. As Cameron himself said, back in December 2012: “We are going to
keep on working with Israel,
doing business with Israel,
trading with Israel.”

In that
address, Cameron was fulsome in his admiration for Israeli achievements.

“Israel has got
more start-up businesses per head than any other country. How do they do it? It’s about the aspiration and drive of its
people. These are people who have innovated around every problem that life has
thrown at them. So we want to work much more closely with Israel – on
innovation, on technology.”

The success of that
policy is clearly apparent in the just-released trade statistics for 2013. Total UK-Israeli
bilateral trade rose over those twelve months by 5.7 per cent, or $300 million,
to stand at very nearly $5.5 billion in all.

Trading activity is
weighted heavily in favour of Israel. Israel
imported some $2 billion-worth of goods from the UK, but exported some $3.5
billion-worth. The UK is, except for the US,
Israel’s
largest export market.

UK demand for Israeli medicines helped take bilateral trade to its record
high, as British patients benefited from Israeli pharmaceutical advances,
including drugs for Parkinson’s disease, such as Azilect, developed by Technion
scientists, and generic versions of drugs produced by Teva. Other Israeli goods popular with Britons included
fruit and vegetables, coffee, tea and spices.

“Given Israel’s status as the ‘start-up nation’, consistently developing
new technologies across sectors,” said Hugo Bieber, chief executive of UK Israel Business, a leading organization
promoting trade relations between the two countries, “we expect to see trade
between the UK and Israel continue to increase.”

Economic development is a key plank in the movement towards some sort of Israel-Palestine détente
– development, that is, in the moribund Palestinian economy. Early on in his current push towards a peace
agreement, US
Secretary of State John Kerry wholeheartedly endorsed “Breaking the Impasse”,
a new business-led initiative aimed at fostering
Israeli-Palestinian peace and prosperity. The project was launched at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Jordan in May
2013, by a group of prominent Israeli and
Palestinian businessmen.

Kerry, convinced that fostering economic growth will
profoundly improve the chance of the political peace process, clearly sees in
“Breaking the Impasse” a valuable instrument for furthering his policy. He has,
accordingly, invested the initiative with both US cash and dynamic leadership. He
has got Quartet representative, one-time UK prime minister Tony Blair, to
head an ambitious plan to develop a healthy, sustainable, private-sector-led
Palestinian economy.

It is no surprise,
therefore, that Cameron met Blair in East Jerusalem, as the UK prime minister prepared for
talks with Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas. The pair
discussed Blair's Palestinian economic initiative, and afterwards Blair gave
his backing to Cameron's drive to boost economic links.

“If we don't build
the Palestinian economy up at the same time as
pursuing the political negotiation,” said Blair, “then a state for the
Palestinians seems a dream and not a reality."

In the joint press
conference held by Cameron and Abbas after their meeting on March 13, Cameron
promised a package of UK
support for Palestinian businesses and farming communities, which the World
Bank estimates will boost the Palestinian economy by some $700 million.

Cameron stopped
short of claiming Canaanite, Arab, or Palestinian lineage – unlike PA’s chief negotiator,
Saeb Erekat. “I am the proud son of the Canaanites,” Erekat recently
maintained, “who were there 5,500 years before Joshua bin Nun burned down the
town of Jericho.”
His family
tree, posted on Facebook, shows his clan, part of the Huwaitat tribe,
descends from Arabia, not Canaan.

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About Me

I have been commenting on the Middle East scene for over thirty years. I am Middle East correspondent for the on-line journal Eurasia Review, and my articles also appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post, the MPC Journal and elsewhere. Born in London, I was educated at Owen's School and am a graduate of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. A veteran radio and audio dramatist and abridger, I am a past chairman of the Society of Authors’ Broadcasting Committee and the Contributors’ Committee of the Audiobook Publishing Association. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006 I was awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting and drama. My latest book is “The Chaos in the Middle East, 2014-2016”. My other books include “One Man’s Israel”, “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” and “The Search for Détente: 2012-2014”.
For a fuller, more personal history, please see the “Biography” page on my website at: www.nevilleteller.co.uk